How far is your bridge hand from the cue ball?  Is it a bridge too far?  If you have a long bridge that is more than 8 inches, it may be too long.   The long bridge provides more of an opportunity to sway your stick during the pool stroke.  The sway causes the cue ball to create unintended english and/or off the line of aim.  Unless you are a seasoned player with many years of play measure your bridge length  to see if it needs to be shortened.  Or use a stroke improvement tool such as coke bottle or Cue Track to see if you are swaying the cue when you stroke.  A 6-8 inch bridge length is recommended for most players.    

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Technorati Tags: aiming, pool stroke, stroking

Three  common mistakes during the stroke process for most players are pulling back too fast on the backswing, raising the head/body before the stroke is finished and gripping the cue too hard.

I attended Jerry Brieseth’s Pool School in 1995 and learned the pool stroke is like a throwing motion.  Imagine throwing a baseball from the outfield to home plate. You pulled the arm back slowly and accelerated into the throw to home plate. A whippy motion on the backswing jerks you off line and limits the acceleration through the cueball. When I observe a really good player missing a shot I often notice he has tried to “load up”  on the shot and the flaw was he was too quick with the backswing.  When I coach players I usually say “Slow down the backswings”. I tell that I will tell them this  so many time that they are going to dream about “Slow down the back swing”. 

Another common mistake is raising the head/body before the stroke is finished.  During a match you might miss a shot that you think you should make. So being anxious on the next shot you get you raise your head/body too soon.  More failure leads to more anxiousness leads to more body movement. This can lead to habitually raising the head/body too soon.  Practice staying down today by setting up a shot and stay down with cue stick extended until the cueball comes to rest or crosses the path of the cue stick.

Are you gripping the cue stick too hard?   You are if  I can walk up behind you and hit the butt of your cue stick with the palm of my hand and it does not fall out of your hand.  Grip lightly to give your wrist a chance to help with the stroke and to finish the stroke process properly.  Can’t get the draw action you expect then try loosening the grip.

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Technorati Tags: pool stroke, stroking